MuuMuu101's 68 Dart, A Learning Process...
Well, the thread title does say it's a "Learning Process..." Honestly, ever since college and working on the SAE Baja Club, working on cars has given me a lot of anxiety with the fear that I will make a mistake or ruin something. It was a very negative environment and every time I messed up someone would either cuss me out or tell me how worthless I was despite the crazy hours I put in. That's why I left the club after 2-3 years despite how successful we were. My physical and mental health declined very quickly. It's pretty difficult for me to deal with even 5 years later. I'll watch car build on Youtube and think to myself, "I can do that! That's easy." Then when the opportunity for something small arises I freak out. I try to be as hands-on as possible and want to be the best engineer/person I can be (I have a Master's in Mechanical Engineering for crying out loud and may possibly pursue a PhD). But even when the small stuff breaks, they always seem like mountains to me and I tend to break down and get discouraged very easily. Confidence in my abilities is still something I'm working on. It always seems like everyone else thinks I can do it, but me. But with everything that happens, I always try to learn something and never want to stop learning. I just have to push myself.
MuuMuu101 was something I thought of in middle/high school. MuuMuu came from the Simpson's episode where Homer tries to be morbidly obese to work from home. He wears a MuuMuu (his dress). I just thought that was a funny episode as a kid and no, I do not wear MuuMuu's. 101 was just an addition to it. I guess a number I liked. Since I used it on one forum my first year of college, I just started using it on multiple forums.
It's funny taking my friends/family to Fall/Spring Fling. Often from a distance someone will be screaming, "Hey MuuMuu! How are you doing?!"
In my opinion, you are fine, the amount of abuse most engines can take exceeds what you'd guess. In any case, if you still have the same oil pressure, I would not worry.
This is a minor issue, IMO, caps like that are a reliability hole. If you were doing a DFMEA on this based on other experiences it would have a high occurrence, moderate severity, and moderate detection so something you'd want to mitigate. So, a few ways to go...loop of heater hose to the intake, OR put a pipe plug in the end of it (remove pump, tap, clean, install plug), swap to an edelbrock pump, or hook up your heater core.
At my school (Kettering University), the FSAE/SAE Baja had a lot of the same issues...some know it all's that made stuff up on the spot. Spent literally one evening down there and then said forget it. I mean I walked in there at 18 years old having already owned and worked on my Duster for a long time, and my dad and I always worked on stuff heavily at home before that. Had the same issue with the First Robotics team in HS.
I'm a BSME 10 years out of school, and I can honestly say that your confidence and drive at work is far more important than the degree you have. I decided against doing an MS degree since I wasn't really sure what that would do for me. I'm currently literally a direct peer with a much older guy with a doctorate of engineering. We do troubleshooting type stuff for probably 40-60% of our total work time, I do everything from product development, work on manufacturing and lab tooling and fixtures, plan and review testing, etc.
My mindset is always "what's the worst that can happen?" when working on stuff. Worst case, you got a real experience out of it. I think a lot of people have a hard time doing it only because they don't believe they can. You'll be fine. The car is an inanimate object and therefore can always be fixed.
